Management Attributes

Title: Successful Business Leader

Name: Sukhpreet Kaur

Student ID: 1513143

Assessment: #2

Subject Code: MCR003 B

Subject: Management Attributes

And Skills

Tutor: Leanne McCoy

Due Date: 1 November, 2020

Word Count: 1528

1
Management Attributes

Successful Business Leader

‘Jack Ma’

Leader’s
Background Leader’s Approach

Leadership & Key Challenges faced

Management Style by Jack Ma

Learning from
Leadership Style
2
Management Attributes

Leader’s Background
(Jack Ma)
Jack Ma is the wonderful example of successful leader. He is a Chinese
Businessman and an investor. He is born on 10 September, 1964 Hangzhou
Zhejiang. He is co-founder and an executive chairman Alibaba group, which
comes under multinational technology. He was the very first person who
launched the trust system as the foundation for the industry of E-commerce
(Yufeng et al 2019, p. 277-305). Jack Ma began his studies at very young age
with the conversation of English speakers in Hangzhou International Hotel. He
faced struggled while attending college. Jack Ma took almost three years to
clear the Chinese entrance exams which were held only once in a year. In 1988,
he finished his graduation in Bachelor of Arts in English and then selected as an
English Lecturer and International trade at Hangzhou Dianzi University. Jack
Ma applied almost ten times to get selection in Harvard Business School, but
every time he got rejection. Moreover, he applied for 30 various jobs, but he
didn’t select (Toma et al 2019, p. 99-105). Later in 1994, Jack Ma heard about
the internet sources and started his very first organization as well. Jack Ma
recognised under the list of most powerful people and gave him 21 st rank and
he is the global ambassador of whole Chinese business. Moreover, he got the
second rank in ‘the world’s 50 greatest leaders’ list. In 2018, he announced
that he would take the retirement from Alibaba group and pursue his work of
education and causes of environment. In 2020, Jack Ma with the $48.2 billion
net worth and recognised as the second wealthier person in China (Massom
2017).

3
Management Attributes

Leader’s Approach
(Skills & Competencies)

Jack Ma always values attitude. ‘For example, in his recent interview, he talked
about his bigger mistake he ever done was when he found the group of
Alibaba, he told his team members that the highest level they could achieved
would be that of the executives and managers which should be hired from the
outside. After that he put more stress on the value of attitude and more
passionate about the theoretical skills’. Jack believes on the common goals of
organizations. From his perspective, nobody can satisfy each single person in
an organization, if it’s employees or business partners or manager. He has
many ideas to execute. He never missed opportunities. So, rather than focus
on one vision, Jack focus on common goal which is a massive success (Hill
2017, p. 3-4). Jack always define the failure as a giving up which is biggest
contribution in success. He never saw his competitors as his enemies. He
believes that we can make friendly competition where the goal is not to make
better one another, we can be both or self-made billionaire. Jack has that kind
of strong character which helps him to build smart and hard work and loyalty
in which group of Alibaba grows. He always saw things from the perspective of
other’s understanding so that he can better understand the thoughts of other
people. As per human capital theory, skills of person and the knowledge are
the key factors to make someone successful (Baired & Satyanarayana 2019, p.
622-634). The most important skill of Jack is he was always positive in every
difficult situation which makes him the world’s wealthiest person and a
brilliant business leader.
4
Management Attributes

5
Management Attributes

Skills & Competencies of ‘Jack Ma’

Values Positive in Focus on goals,

Attitude every situation not on money

Long-term Bold Always the expand

Vision the boundaries

Never saw his Give importance

Hire people with to other’s
competitors as his
superior skills perspective
enemies

Unit people under Best possible efforts to

achieve the
common goal predetermined goals
6
Management Attributes

Leadership & Management Style

(Jack Ma)

Jack is a Democratic leader. He always gives importance to the ideas of his

employees. The leadership style of Jack is transformational. He provides
encouragement and motivation to employees so that they can achieve more
success. From the perspective of Jack Ma, moral leadership isn’t all about
money. On the IPO day of Alibaba, Jack insisted that there are mainly six values
of company management like customer first, integrity, trust, good teamwork,
embrace change and the most important passionate about goals. According to
Jack, change is the best plan and everyone should accept changes in every
situation. Jack is emotionally intelligently, due to his transformational
leadership style, he is very good in inspiring others and give them motivation.
Due to better communication with others and inner character, a leader can be
transformational leader (Miftari 2018, p. 259-264). ‘For example, when Jack
has started his new business after getting rejections from KFC jobs and Harvard
Business School, he started making changes in his process. The group of
Alibaba’s creation was the very first change in his life which directly lead him to
the success’. When he implemented the changes, Jack understood that to
make the business successful and being a good leader, he had understood the
needs of customers or employees. Alibaba was first B2B company and after
that Jack converted that company into B2C or even C2C with the help of
transformational management skills (Barczyk et al 2011, p. 105-109).

7
Management Attributes

Leader’s Key Challenges

In 2010 and 2011, the biggest challenge faced by the executive chairman and
founder of Alibaba ‘Jack Ma’ was founding buyers. They were struggling and
under pressure. According to Cheng, the executive chairman of Yahoo, had
owned the 40.2% stake under the Chinese E-commerce giant. They wanted to
low down their stake while cut the corporate debt and the actual value from
their determined prize values. It was very difficult for the executives to raising
all funds for their stakes from only their private investors, which were not
completely familiar with the company. Here, Jack was facing challenge which
hurts his long-term goals. On the other side, Alibaba’s dominance of E-
commerce Chinese sector has prominently hurting the different operators of
store departments, several shopping malls, and some of them who were
started working behind the company to low down the growth of Alibaba
through bureaucratic way. After a long time struggling, in 2012, Jack has raised
the funds and able to purchase the shares of Yahoo (Cheng 2017, p.4-55).

The second biggest challenge faced by Jack Ma, Due to the recession period,
the demand of Chinese goods has decreased, Alibaba has reduced the cost of
its gold suppliers. After that Jack decided to sacrifice the short-term
profitability over the long-term sustainability. While all other investors show
their concern towards short-term results, Jack was more concerned for the
perspectives of long-term, this thing was not valued by the western standards.
From all the investors, nobody paid much attention towards Jack’s approach,
they were not
8
Management Attributes

agree with that (Barczyk et al 2010, p. 5-9). Hence, the profits of Alibaba had
declined due to the economic slowdown. Exports from China had also declined
which directly effects the Alibaba. When Jack stated that he wanted only
shareholders in Alibaba group, not shareholders, then most of the investors
were not happy and they decided not to deal with Jack. He faced the situation
in a creative manner. When other companies thought this is the recession, at
that time Jack created it as an opportunity and hired new employees. He
competed the recession period successfully and make the Chinese market
better and improve business practices of China. In true words, the grand
success of Jack Ma represented his hard work, dedication, customer focus and
great sense of market (Barczyk et al 2010, p.5-h9).

Jack Ma

Key
Challenges

Jack Ma
9
Management Attributes

Learning from Leadership Style

(Jack Ma)

The most important thing learnt from Jack Ma’s leadership and management
style is in nowadays making the mong is very simple, however making the
money which is sustainable while taking caring of society and in the
improvement of whole world is very difficult. In addition, giving up on
something is the greatest failure. If you give your best and failed to achieve the
determined goal, then see it as your success. Like all the great leaders,
everyone learnt lessons from the difficulties they have faced. A good leader
deal with every situation with both heart and mind (Leanne 2020, p. 2-11). So,
the major thing is to learn from own mistakes. Money should not be our goal,
if it is then we need to change our mindset. A brilliant leader used his life to
gain experiencing in the world and enjoy life and helping out other people.
Apart from this, the other thing I have learnt is being an excellent leader, we
should cultivate our objectives and goals in that way so that we can not only
improve the companies, but also improve the lives of our employees. We
should establish that goals into our cultures and implement at every stage of
our life to make the world better. Overall, leaders face several difficult
situations to choose the right path (Leanne 2020). And this is exactly Jack Ma
does and make successful in his life and as well as in his business.

10
Management Attributes

Reference List

Barczyk, C, Falk, G, Feldman, L & Rarick, C 2011, ‘Alibaba: Changing the way
business is conducted in the information economy’, Journal of the
International Academy for Case Studies, vol. 17, no.7, p. 127-133.
Retrieved 2011, ProQuest e-library
https://search-proquest-
com.ezproxy.gca.edu.au/docview/912512973/BFCB9492255D43FDPQ/1
?accountid=136883

Barczyk, C, Falk, G, Feldman, L& Rarick, C 2011, ‘Alibaba: The Chinese dragon of
e-commerce’, Allied Academics International Conference. International
Academy for Case Studies. Proceedings, vol. 17, no. 2, p. 5-9. Retrieved
2010, ProQuest e-library
https://search-proquest-
com.ezproxy.gca.edu.au/docview/807539440/B0E157F0260A43E4PQ/1?
accountid=136883

Baird, AM & Satyanarayana, P 2019, ‘Employer’s rating of skills and

competencies college graduates need to get hired’, Journal of Education
& Training, vol. 61, no. 5, p. 622-634. DOI: 10. 1108/ET-12-2018-0250

Cheng, A 2017, ‘Alibaba vs. The world’, Institutional Investor, P. 4-55. Retrieved
July 25, 2017, ProQuest e-library

11
Management Attributes

https://search-proquest-
com.ezproxy.gca.edu.au/docview/1932702307/30D9238CD7DC4E98PQ/
4?accountid=136883

Hill, A 2017, ‘Business School: Alibaba CEO, MBA skills and millennial
managers’, Journal of FT.com, p. 3-4. Retrieved Sep 5, 2017, ProQuest e-
library
https://search-proquest-
com.ezproxy.gca.edu.au/docview/1947268727/EDE821B651314332PQ/
3?accountid=136883

Leanne, M 2020, ‘Week 04: Leadership with heart and mind [Subject Learning
Material]’, In MCR003 B: Management Attributes & Skills, p. 2-11.
Retrieved from UBSS ProQuest, e- library
https://moodle.ubss.edu.au/course/view.php?id=3650

Leanne, M 2020, ‘Week 05: Courage and Moral Leadership [Subject Learning
Material]’, In MCR003 B: Management Attributes & Skills. Retrieved
from UBSS ProQuest, e-library
https://moodle.ubss.edu.au/course/view.php?id=3650

Miftari, V 2018, ‘Transformational Leadership Communication in Developing

Countries’, Journal of History Culture and Art Research, vol. 7, no. 2, p.
259-264. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7596/taksad.v7i2.1436.

Masoom, G 2017, ‘Jack Ma’s story is a sort of American Dream’, The Economic

12
Management Attributes

Times, retrieved 15 February 2017, ProQuest e-library

https://search-proquest-
com.ezproxy.gca.edu.au/docview/1868046311/29D5A061EF48D7PQ/2?
accountid=136883

Toma, SG, Marinescu, P, Constantin, L & Costea, D 2019, ‘Beyond charismatic

leadership: the case of Jack Ma’, Bucharest, no. 29, p. 99-105. Retrieved
2019, ProQuest e-library
https://search-proquest-
com.ezproxy.gca.edu.au/docview/2407340937/8285A05B1304E7FPQ/1?
accountid=136883

Yufeng, S, Nengquan, W & Xiang, Z 2019, ‘An entrepreneurial process modal

from an institutional perspective’, Nankai Business Review International,
vol. 10, no. 2, p. 277-305. DOI: 10. 1108/NBRI-08-2017-0046

13